


Anchored

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama/Romance, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 05:39:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/794505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim contemplates his anchor to reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anchored

Disclaimers: Don't own them, will give them back, don't sue me. 

Notes: (crossing fingers) Hope I'm doing this right! Thanks for Carla for betaing and encouraging me to post, otherwise you wouldn't be reading it now. (g) 

29 January 98 

## Anchored

by Bronwyn  


Most days I can find joy in my senses; the simplest sights become magical to my eyes and everyday sounds become music in my ears... and my Guide is at my side to smile with me, eager to share the experience when I discover something new. 

Yet sometimes my enhanced senses are a curse. There are days I'd do anything to escape the world that envelops me, refusing to let go. I feel the air press against my skin with its icy breath and see the dust settle on the floor in wake of my footsteps. Footfalls that echo like jungle drums in my ears as I cross the loft to step out onto the balcony, searching for an escape, a brief respite from everything that presses around me. 

I only find chaos. 

Everywhere there is noise. It rises and falls in a hideous symphony of car horns and voices. The stench of city life assaults my nose and taste buds alike and the light flares up and dims in sudden waves that drives right through to my brain and makes my head pound. 

I can turn down my senses, like I do now, but that carries its own price. Without them I feel vulnerable, it's like playing at blind man's bluff, leaving me defenceless and open to attack from every angle. I feel deaf, blind and frustratingly alone in the world with no heartbeats or soft breathing nearby. 

I'm not a child afraid of the dark. I don't fear being alone, like I feared the monster under the bed when I was four. But unless you live every day of your life with the constant hum of life in stereo around you, you can't understand how completely alone you feel when that link is cut off, no matter that it's by your own choice. It's... disconcerting. Sometimes being open to the ceaseless noise around me is preferable to the being cut off from it completely. 

It's times like this that Blair is a godsend. His heartbeat is there when I have to tune out everything else or slowly go mad. One steady, constant beat that I can focus on and blot out everything else. There've been blue nights I've lain awake and done nothing but listen to the soft pattern of inhalation and exhalation, listen to the blood beating through his body in a never-ending beat of life. He is my touchstone during the times I've wished I could amputate my senses like an infected limb. He's my lifeline when my senses become more than I am. He's by my side whenever I need something to anchor me to this world; when it's so easy to let myself slip away on a magical trip into a zone-out. 

Sandburg, you don't know how anaemic the phrase 'zone out' is to describe that incredible sensation. The world slides away so quickly, leaving everything behind; -- the pain, the loneliness, the troubles, -- and I'm floating to a place that's filled only with beauty. I could drift away now on the feel of the night rain as it hits my skin. Each drop is an experience in sensation, little chilled pinpricks of pleasure that hit my body and slide like a lover's caress over my skin. I could drift away on the pure pleasure of it all... 

... but your presence calls to me from inside the loft and I can't leave that behind. I can't take your smell with me when the world is made of nothing but a shivering cool touch of water. So I close the doors and move inside where the room is suffocating but your smell is everywhere. 

It doesn't take long to light a fire, just a small blaze, enough to keep two men warm as the weather spirals into the holiday season of blizzards and snow. The couch is still warm where you sprawled, and I can just make out the contours of your body in a tactile heat map when I run my hands over the rough fabric. When I pull off my sweater, I can feel your heat against my skin, enveloping me like a warm Blair-hug. 

Your smell is so strong here. I've tried to put that unique scent into words and I've never succeeded. I don't have your gift for language or your talent for description. I try, still, to find words for the warm musk that permeates your clothes when you're at peace. A soft smell that's not the soap you use or your herbal shampoo. It's not the after-shave you stopped wearing when you realised it made me sneeze, but still remains, caught in your clothes no matter how many times they've been washed. It's simply you; a smell that fills the loft and makes the house a home. 

Right now the home you've made is as quiet as death. Your scent lingers, despite the hours it's been since you walked out the door. Experience tells me your musk can haunt me for days before it fades, and even then it rises up to torment me when I least expect it, caught in a shirt you've dropped into the laundry hamper and forgotten. Tonight that's not something I'll have to think about. It's late and you'll be home soon, bringing with you not only your own smell, but that of the woman you've been with. 

That strange female-scent is transitory, like her presence in your life. I've never worried about the women that drift through your emotions, they all fade with time. Her scent will be washed away with soap and water before the night is out and your heartbeat will fill the silence. 

Your heat has faded from the couch and I move to stoke the fire, trying to replace the warmth of your ghost touch with an artificial blaze. 

And I can see you in the flames.   
  


* * *

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